Rated 1 out of 5 stars

The combination of Firefox 25.0 and current Brief version has resulted in me losing access to the thousands of unread posts from last week that I was going to browse through. This sort of unreliability makes the program a risky choice. I've stuck with Brief through the bad times, but I'm finally done with it.

A great idea, needing some workRated 3 out of 5 stars

What I like:* Unloaded tabs are dim* Pinned tabs, and tabs belonging to certain domains can be automatically loaded on opening the browser* Tabs can be automatically unloaded based on an amount of inactivity time that you choose. (inactivity is based on user interaction, not on anything else that might be going on in the tab)* it's just such a common-sense feature that belongs in any browser. You should never have to close the browser and re-open it to get it unload tabs.

What I don't like:* If you "Keep Address Loaded" on a tab, it keeps every tab using the same domain loaded. This can have the perverse effect of actually LOADING a whole bunch of tabs you wanted kept unloaded (and that Firefox alone would never have loaded) just because you wanted a single tab open (e.g. a YouTube video of an hour-long lecture). This is a sure way to crash Firefox within minutes, as it tries to keep all of them open at once.

Good, even for large files.Rated 4 out of 5 stars

I have 0.9.10. I've had earlier versions as well, and I find them useful for tracking download progress.

If you're downloading a large file (over 2 GB, in my case) then the percent done goes negative, and the status "x MB of y MB" goes negative.

This is a pretty basic mistake (not using large enough integer type, or using units that are too small). BUT, the problem appears to be Firefox's, and not necessarily due to this add-on, as the same thing happens in Firefox's Download window.

Fortunately, this add-on IS able to (eventually) correctly derive an estimated time remaining, which Firefox alone is unable to do at any point.

It would be nice if this could completely compensate for Firefox's defect, but having the time correct does help a bit.

Need version for FireFox 4Rated 3 out of 5 stars

Some users of the version available here will probably be like me and install the version directly from their website. I have 0.5.23s. The problem is that this version doesn't work with FireFox 4. It's not like they didn't know FireFox 4 was coming (for months and months and months...). That's just sloppy work.

Need Update for Firefox 4Rated 3 out of 5 stars

Morbus, if this is in Firefox 4, why is everyone here asking for it? Maybe you don't know what it is.

Firefox 4 seems to have one single setting that you can adjust (if you're confident) which controls the automatic unloading of tabs. This is not a good way to be doing things.

BarTab gives control to the user, via the GUI, which shows the loaded/unloaded status of each tab in the tab strip. Any unloaded tab can be loaded. Any loaded tab (or all other loaded tabs) can be unloaded. It's manual. Like a gearshift, manual is better.

Further, upon launching Firefox, BarTab prevents the automatic loading of tabs. And BarTab can be instructed never to unload certain tabs.

I'm not aware of ANY of this functionality in Firefox 4, and BarTab no longer works (although my version 2.0 says that it is compatible with 4.0.* in spite of this).

Because of the problems with BarTab 2.0 in Firefox 4, I've been hesitant to uninstall it, in case I lose my tabs in the process.